


The Winter Sea

by Inisheer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: #BuckyNat Week, #MCU Wednesday, Gen, Missing Scene, Odessa - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 14:50:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6474622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inisheer/pseuds/Inisheer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Which first: the sound of the tyre’s explosion, or the shockwave of it running through the car?</p>
<p>What happened in Odessa was the action of a ghost, so it is appropriate that it haunts Natasha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Winter Sea

Which first: the sound of the tyre’s explosion, or the shockwave of it running through the car?

One moment Natasha was laughing to her charge’s terrible rendition of the cheap pop music, long-forgotten Stateside, that emanated from the crackling radio, as she drove along the high coast road overlooking the grey winter sea and thought about proper warm beds and fresh coffee. 

Then, in a blinding moment, she was fighting to control the swerving, rebellious vehicle she suddenly found under her hands. Reflexes burned in deeper than instinct took Natasha Romanoff (Nadia Rudenko today) into the skid but it was a winding road and a steep slope and no guardrail and no ordinary skid -

\- They fell -

\- She forced herself to go limp and let the world turn overhead, right itself, turn again. The engineer screamed, kept screaming. Maybe in memory it stretched longer and at the time it only seemed to be the seconds it lasted. The car stopped.

Natasha reached to turn off the radio. The only sounds were the rush of pounding blood and the softer lap of water around them. The car had landed deep in the surf. The Black Sea stretched out to one side, the rocky half-cliff shore to the other. Head clearing, Natasha slid low and scanned in every direction for signs of movement. It was a desolate place, the kind people don’t visit by choice nor linger in. No vehicles passed on the stretch of road visible above them. She saw nothing.

That was more frightening than a horde of gunmen would have been.

Her engineer muttered deliriously. Natasha quickly checked him over. His groggy reactions to her sharp questions suggested concussion, and one leg twisted at a useless angle. There would be other injuries. He couldn’t move on his own, and they needed to move: the water wasn’t deep enough to fill the car but it would nonetheless kill them as surely as anything that waited outside. And Natasha preferred the thought of drowning to hypothermia, anyway. Already she could feel the cold seeping into her submerged feet, creeping up her bones, breath misting the air at the loss of the car’s shoddy heating. Her headscarf had slipped back from her hair.

She unbuckled them both, then wriggled out of the window on the seaward side. She couldn’t shake the sense of danger, but everywhere she looked there was nothing, nothing and more nothing, and she was out of alternatives, so Natasha swore under her breath and worked to pull the dead weight of her whimpering engineer out through the other front window and up onto a fog-damp rock.

There was a click of scree.

There was a weapon in her hand even before she’d looked up; before she saw the figure silhouetted, crouching, against the greying sky fifty paces away. Natasha stepped in front of the engineer and fired off a double-tap. Both shots went wide. Her hands were shaking, cold, not fear, the Black Widow feared nothing. Cold.

The second pair hit her target, with a useless, echoing clang.

Which first: the sound of the rifle’s crack, or the shockwave of it running through her body?

Pain blossomed. Instinct deeper than training made Natasha drop her gun and clutch at her bloodied side. Somewhere behind, beside, she saw or heard or _sensed_ her engineer fall back into the water.

When she looked up, the Winter Soldier had gone.

Natasha sank to her knees on the stones. Surprise gave way to indignant anger. Did he think he could leave her to die, and not finish the job? Did he think she would give up on that so easily? She spat out that idea in a curse with - to her relief - no blood in it. The blood was all on her hands. The bullet had gone clean through. The sharp pain had already diffused to a dull, insistent ache. That didn’t mean it hurt less: it would be a slow, burning pain. She ripped off her wayward headscarf, folded it into a pad and pressed it against her side.

Her engineer’s death had been quick, at least.

When she felt stronger, and the blood flow had been staunched, Natasha pulled him out of the water. There was a perfect dime-sized hole in his forehead. She could guess that the back of his skull was less pretty. Natasha was dizzy when she stood, dizzy from lifting the dead weight of the man onto the shingle, and black encroached at the edges of her vision until she told it firmly to go away.

Which first: blood loss, or hypothermia?

The whispering surf was tinged with blood, blood on her hands, her feet frozen in the tiny lapping waves. He had shot her and left her on a beach to die, but she would not die; the Black Widow did not die. The Black Widow killed, men, women, children, failed when she was set to guard, let their lives drip through her fingers. What else could she do? She would have to ask him, when she found him. Find him and ask him. A ghost would know, death and life, husband, lover, where have we met before, and what did you let me live for?

They said she was delirious when they found her, half-frozen, teetering at the edge of hypovolemic shock, and mumbling to herself on the darkening beach. They said that. Even afterwards, when the memory had grown hazy, Natasha wondered if that was the clearest she’d ever been. Or perhaps that was something she’d convinced herself, so that the half-acquaintances who’d picked her up off the beach would believe something like it and not pity the Black Widow’s weakness.

When she looked for him, it was because a man like the Winter Soldier, proven real, could not be ignored. It was for her own revenge and justice for the dead. It was for half a dozen other perfectly justifiable reasons. That was what Natasha told herself.

Which first: to lie or to forget?

**Author's Note:**

> Both tags and ratings are terrifying. I've no idea if I got this right. (Though I at least spelled the day of the week correctly this time…)
> 
> Written for BuckyNat Week 2016 (MCU Wednesday).


End file.
